3XDays
by Shi-Toyu
Summary: For three days out of the year, they were consumed by each other. No one else existed, much less mattered. And for the rest of the year? For the rest of the year they waited for those 3XDays. 3XCastle! (CastleXJerry Tyson, the 3XKiller) I know it sounds odd, but read it I promise you won't regret it.


A/N: So this is a little different than things I've done before. This idea came from my muse, dearest Hiromi, to whom I dedicate this one-shot. This is about Richard Castle and Jerry Tyson, the 3X Killer. I hope you enjoy and who knows? Maybe you might like it…Castle did.

Hiromi, you make writing even more of a pleasure than it was before. You stimulate my creativity and you think outside of the box to help me solve the problems my characters are facing. I don't know how I ever survived without you. You are the Jim to my Sherlock and I love the game we play. Love, I ship us.

Also, I don't own Castle.

3XDays

Three days of out the year, they were together and everything they had was each other. Castle would tell everyone he was in the Hamptons and Jerry, well, Jerry didn't have anyone to tell. Sometimes Jerry would come earlier than arranged, just so he could watch the writer in his everyday life. He would follow him on a case, sneak into his loft, anything to feel dangerously close to the other man.

If they were caught, it was likely they would both go to jail. But that just made it all the more fun. It was thrilling, an adventure. Castle had always loved adventures and Jerry was always up for something just a tad bit dangerous. Neither of them told anyone about their little liaisons.

For those three days out of the year, they were consumed by one another, utterly and completely. They were each fascinated by the other and took the time to explore each other even more thoroughly, both physically and mentally. They didn't have sex, that wasn't in the cards, not yet, but they came so, so close. It was the closeness that heightened the feelings between them.

That night at the motel, something had awoken inside Richard Castle. He decided that he wanted to be very, very close to death. He wanted to feel it, touch it, taste it, in ways he never had before. There was something in Jerry's eyes that just drew him in. In that moment, both of them knew that things would never be the same again.

Jerry had taken Richard then, away from the motel and off to a cabin far in the countryside. No one had discovered the unconscious Kevin Ryan until the next morning and by then the two were long gone. The team had thought Castle kidnapped. For three days, they had searched for the man until he had turned up in an alley in the city, claiming not to remember anything that had happened.

That was the first time.

A year after that, with no planning between them, Castle had booked a trip to the Hamptons and Jerry showed up in his kitchen. Neither of them was surprised. Three days later, Castle returned to New York, most of a new book complete and a number of bite marks hidden under his collar.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the whole arrangement, if you could call it that, was the fact that they _weren't_ having sex. There was so much tension in their relationship, so much want and need. Hands roamed without caution, kisses were hot and pressing, and arousal was constantly in the air. Sex was just an invisible line that neither stepped across.

They were obsessed with each other. Each desperate to figure out how the other one ticked, how they thought. They were so cut up in the other, that neither bothered to examine themselves. This broken, dysfunctional attraction that didn't make sense on paper, much less in person, somehow worked. It was a secret shared between them that could never be shared.

They flirted dangerously back and forth, leaving each other messages that they could never even be sure the other got. Sometimes Castle would leave notes for the killer in his bedside drawer, only to have them disappear while he was out, or in the shower. The mystery excited him in ways he'd never experienced before. Jerry gave the gun he'd taken from Detective Ryan to the Philip Lee to tell Castle just how involved he still was in the writer's life. Each of them fed off of the danger the elicit contact provided.

Then they had their first fight. It wasn't even so much a fight as Castle did something that Jerry didn't agree with. He didn't like it, he wouldn't have it. Castle belonged to _him_ and no one else was allowed to touch him, to know him in the ways that Jerry did. They certainly weren't allowed to know him in the ways that Jerry didn't. And so, he framed Castle for murder.

Jerry pretended to be the writer and struck up a romance with that ridiculous girl, Tessa Horton. Killing her had been a pleasure, even though she wasn't his usual type. It had allowed him to get out all if his anger but it also made him feel so, so close to his almost lover. Killing someone _as_ Castle was delicious in ways he'd never anticipated, and so he savored the feeling.

Walking into the precinct to visit Castle while he was in Holding only served to heighten the feeling. He basked in the glorious experience like a cat in the sun. The look on Castle's face when Jerry had told him that the killer had people waiting for him in jail was just delicious. The best part, though, the best part was when Castle had shot him on the bridge, allowing him to topple over the side.

Faking his death meant that no one would be chasing him. No one would be looking for him. It was perfect and Castle, that brilliant man, had helped him do it.

The writer took off for the Hamptons right after they finished the case. He told the team that he needed some time alone to figure things out, but he and Jerry never thought too much when they were together.

And so it was, a romance born of three days a year, of secret notes, and hidden liaisons. It was a romance neither could tell anyone else about, yet defined each of them as surely as Castle's writing or Jerry's blondes. Together, nothing could stand in their way.

Except, of course, for the fact that they could never be together.

A/N: I hope you all enjoy! This was a lot of fun to write, honestly. Tell me what you think! I'd like some perspective on this couple. Maybe I'll even write another one.


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